23rd June 1825

[Image: William Hone's Everyday Book]

Wrote to Mrs Emmerson & sent a letter to Hone's Everyday book with a poem which I fatherd on Andrew Marvel.*

* 'Death.'

Why should mans high aspiring mind

Burn in him, with so proud a breath;

When all his haughty views can find

In this world, yields to death;

The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,

The rich, the poor, and great, and small,

Are each, but worms anatomys,

To strew, his quiet hall.

.
Power, may make many earthly gods,

Where gold, and bribery's guilt, prevails

But death's, unwelcome honest odds,

Kicks oer, the unequal scales.

The flatter'd great, may clamours raise

Of Power,—and, their own weakness hide,

But death, shall find unlooked for ways

To end the Farce of pride.—

.
An arrow, hurtel'd ere so high
From e'en a giant's sinewy strength,
In time's untraced eternity,
Goes, but a pigmy length—
Nay, whirring from the tortured string,
With all its pomp, of hurried flight,
'Tis, by the Skylarks little wing,
Outmeasured, in its height.
.
Just so, mans boasted strength, and power,
Shall fade, before deaths lightest stroke;
Laid lower, than the meanest flower—
Whose pride, oertopt the oak.
And he, who like a blighting blast,
Dispeopled worlds, with wars alarms,
Shall, be himself destroyed at last,
By poor, despised worms.
.
Tyrants in vain, their powers secure,
And awe slaves' murmurs, with a frown;
But unawed death, at last is sure,
To sap the Babels down —
A stone thrown upward, to the skye,
Will quickly meet, the ground agen:
So men-gods, of earths vanity,
Shall drop at last, to men;
.
And power, and pomp, their all resign
Blood purchased thrones, and banquet Halls.
Fate, waits to sack ambitions shrine
As bare, as prison walls,
Where, the poor suffering wretch bows down,
To laws, a lawless power hath past;—
And pride, and power, and King, and Clown,
Shall be death's slaves at last.
.
Time, the prime minister of death,
There's nought, can bribe his honest will
He, stops the richest Tyrants breath,
And lays, his mischief still:
Each wicked scheme for power, all stops,
With grandeurs false, and mock display,
As Eve's shades, from high mountain tops,
Fade with the rest, away.
.
Death levels all things, in his march,
Nought, can resist his mighty strength;
The Pallace proud,—triumphal arch,
Shall mete, their shadows length:
The rich, the poor, one common bed,
Shall find, in the unhonoured grave,
Where weeds shall crown alike, the head,
Of Tyrant, and of Slave.

(Signed, in Hone's Everyday Book "Marvel")